Steve Jobs is dead! Oh – never mind

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is alive, but you wouldn’t have known it from a Bloomberg obituary that hit the wires by accident Wednesday afternoon.

Bloomberg’s obit for Steve Jobs missed its mark. (AP)

Here’s how the news agency figured Jobs would be remembered:

A college dropout who co-founded Apple Inc., Jobs won ardent supporters by ushering “cool” gadgets to market. He delivered the Macintosh, the first user-friendly computer, and conquered the online music industry with the iPod, making white ear buds fashionable. In 2007, he led Apple into the mobile-phone market with the Web-surfing iPhone. And as chief executive of Pixar animation studios, Jobs promoted computer-generated storytelling with movies including “Toy Story.”

The obit goes on and on for pages. (Gawker has a full copy – with reporters’ notes.) Bloomberg retracted it soon after it was inadvertently published, but not before several tech sites and blogs got hold of it.

Jobs, 53, has been suffering from pancreatic cancer, but seems OK – for now.

Because people expect thorough obituaries hours after a famous figure’s death, it is not uncommon for news agencies and national newspapers to prepare obituaries for the rich and famous well ahead of their demise. The New York Times has about 1,200 unpublished obituaries on file, waiting to be published.